D&D 5E Do you ever roll for monster HPs in 5E?

[FitzTheRuke]

I feel that HP are abstract enough, and "damage" is random enough. No need to roll HP. Sometimes I lower HP and buff damage output to make encounters faster, though!

 

[Clint_L]

I just use the default averages - I haven't rolled once in 5e. We also use standard progression for characters, so there is no variability in HP. I haven't found that it feels any different than when I used to roll for HP, except that there is a lot less work and tracking.

Edit: I suppose it might make a difference if my players were all super hardcore and knew the default HP, since it would add another variable. But, eh, I haven't found that knowing whether this particular goblin has 3 HP or 7 HP makes a functional difference. And monsters with lots of hit dice always skew towards the average anyway.

To be honest, I sort of forgot that rolling for HP is an option.

 

[Ibrandul]

I sometimes roll. Usually what I do instead is, when more than one of a single monster type appears in an encounter, I will “fake roll” by adjusting HP around the average. So zombie 1 will have an extra 5 HP while zombie 2 will be down 5, etc.

 

[Stormonu]

Y'know, I still roll the damage monsters do (I play in another game where the DM just has the monsters deal average damage), but I always just use average monster HP because its generally too fiddly to do it at the start of an encounter and I've just never considered prerolling since I'm almost always using premade adventures. Are there any 5E adventures where they specify hit points for creatures/NPCs being different from the average?

I do like the idea of quarter, half, three-quarter and full HP to represent different monster qualities - though it'd be helpful to have those pre-calculated somewhere.

 

[Osgood]

For most monsters I typically use the average, but I’ll beef up the leader—max or close to it. I like the idea of tossing in some runts with minimum hit points for a big fight.
Now for special fight, with a solo monster, like a dragon or giant, I’ll roll hit points, but I usually give them at least tad average unless there’s a good reason they’d be weaker.

And I usually do average damage for mooks, but roll fir special monsters and bosses.

 

[cbwjm]

Y'know, I still roll the damage monsters do (I play in another game where the DM just has the monsters deal average damage), but I always just use average monster HP because its generally too fiddly to do it at the start of an encounter and I've just never considered prerolling since I'm almost always using premade adventures. Are there any 5E adventures where they specify hit points for creatures/NPCs being different from the average?

I do like the idea of quarter, half, three-quarter and full HP to represent different monster qualities - though it'd be helpful to have those pre-calculated somewhere.

I also still roll monster damage. I started out in 5e using the average but my players preferred that I roll instead.

 

[GrimCo]

I never rolled for monster HP in any edition. Amount of HP is dependant on the situation. If i see that combat is turning into slog fest (players rolling poor and missing frequently) ill drop hp. If i see them demolishing encounters too fast, they get sudden boost to max HP.

We tend to do low number of encounters per session and have frequent sessions without combat. So i want combat to be fun and at least somewhat challenge, but i want to avoid grind fest ( I still have PTSD from single combat encounters that lasted for 2-3 hours).

 

[Gorck]

As a DM who uses XP leveling instead of Milestone leveling, I have a question: if you roll for the monsters’ HP, do you adjust the CR* up or down if it strays too far from the average? A monster with minimum HP is a much different challenge than a monster with maximum HP.

*I know CR itself is problematic, but that’s a story for another thread.

 

[grimmgoose]

I use chatgpt to format statblocks into Obsidian, where I use a dice-roller add-on. Which means, everytime I pop open the monster statblock for "bandits", Obsidian randomly rolls its HP. My statblock looks like:

Bandit

HP: 9 (dice: 2d8) [Obsidian will randomly roll the dice in the parenthesis, so it looks like: average-number (obsidian-rolled-number).

 

[MNblockhead]

As a DM who uses XP leveling instead of Milestone leveling, I have a question: if you roll for the monsters’ HP, do you adjust the CR* up or down if it strays too far from the average? A monster with minimum HP is a much different challenge than a monster with maximum HP.

*I know CR itself is problematic, but that’s a story for another thread.

Nope. CR includes the range. While I could go to the DMG and adjust CR based on HP, damage output, etc. guidance in the DMG, I'm (1) too lazy and (2) never found CRs to be all that useful. There are just too many variable that determine how difficult an encounter is beyond the inputs that used to determine CR in 5e.